


love, explained

by freshia



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fluff without Plot, I just wanted to write pure cuteness so i did, M/M, No angst here, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-04
Updated: 2016-10-04
Packaged: 2018-08-19 10:54:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8203051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freshia/pseuds/freshia
Summary: “Details.” Lance waves a hand in the air, and Keith sighs.
  (He is so in love, though.)A classic romance told in snippets, Feat. excessive crayon consumption, blood-thirsty swingsets, extreme dodgeball, rocks through windows, and hot chocolate snuggles. (Not necessarily in that order.)





	

_Here’s how Keith and Lance meet_ :

 

It’s only the second week of 6th grade, and Keith already knows he doesn’t like middle school. Twelve years old might be too young to be thinking about dropping out, but if it was a viable option Keith would _seriously_ consider it.

The kid who’s assigned seat is right next to him-- _Lance_ , the cover on his math textbook says, _Lance_ , he knows this because the teacher is always yelling at _Lance_ \--is having a very hot debate with another student.

“You can’t eat crayons.” he says, crossing his arms in front of him. Normally, Keith wouldn’t care, but they’re being particularly loud and this is supposed to be work time.

“Uhh, yeah-huh?” the kid sitting in front of him says, their glasses falling down their face. They push them back up and smirk. “That’s why little kids can eat them! It even says right on the box that they’re _non-toxic_.”

“How am I supposed to know what that means!” Lance says, throwing his hands up in an exaggerated manner. The student in front of him rolls their eyes. “You’re telling me, that I could eat this entire box and be fine?”

“Yup.” they respond, popping the p at the end, and Lance crosses his arms in front of him.

“Heh, well, _challenge accepted_.”

Keith watches in a half-horrified, half-fascinated silence as Lance dumps the 16 crayons out of the box and chews them up, one by one, wrapper included.

“Gross.” the kid in front of them responds, as he downs the last one, and Lance smiles back at them. His teeth are dyed blue.

Fifteen minutes pass, after that, uneventful (and peaceful, for once), until Lance suddenly stands up.  
“Um, I think I need to go to the nurse…” he starts--

and then promptly turns to his side and vomits up the rainbow onto Keith’s desk.

 

/

 

 _Here’s how Keith and Lance get to know each other_ :

 

Dodgeball day during gym is the best day, in Lance’s opinion.

(He was very, very competitive.)

He’s on blue team and he’s absolutely _wrecking_ , taking out red team members like he was born to throw bouncy rubber balls at other kids. It’s like a murder scene, absolutely _brutal,_ and nothing was going to stand in his way. He was KING OF THE DODGE, BOW DOWN AND KISS HIS...

FEET.

Lance is so swept up in his _absolute obliteration_ of the other team that he doesn’t notice that his team is getting wiped out, too. Kids on either side of the gym stand and watch in awe as the balls fly back and forth, bouncing off other children in an absolutely savage scene, until there is only two standing:

Keith and Lance.

Lance pauses, so sweaty that the ball he just picked up nearly drops out of his hands, and makes eye contact with Keith as he realizes that they’re the only two left. The final stand, the ultimate--

 _Thunk_.

His _epic_ internal monologue is cut _epically_ short as a ball hits his shoulder, and ricochets off as he staggers backward from the impact. Keith is staring at him, looking nonchalant.

The PE coach blows his whistle and tells them to line up, marches them back into the locker room in a single-file line and Lance corners Keith before he can change back into normal clothes.

“You beat me!” he says, and Keith nods.

“Yeah?"

“ _How_?” Lance asks, because he cannot believe this. A king does not just simply fall from his throne, brought down by a kid with nothing but a bad haircut and a red rubber ball. This is _mutiny_! How else could something like this have happened? He must have had traitors on his own team, or something.

“You were just kind of standing there, staring, so…”

Lance clenches his fist. “I will take back my dodgeball crown, mark my words, _Keith_! Consider us officially _rivals_.”

“... Okay.” Keith says, and then, from that point on, they are.

 

/

 

 _Here’s how Keith and Lance become friends_ :

 

Keith is the kind of kid who doesn’t _need_ to study for tests to ace them. He probably wouldn’t need to show up to class, either, but unfortunately that’s illegal. He’s only fifteen.

Lance, however, is the kind of kid who has to study for hours every night to keep up with Keith. And he _does_ , for some reason, because their stupid “rivalry” that they had made in 7th grade had somehow held water for this long. Lance gets a 98 on a test, Keith gets a 99, Lance studies _even harder_ and gets a 100 on the next.

It’s really, really stupid, but--it kind of gives Keith something to look forward to.

(Nothing is more entertaining than a fired-up Lance.)

So that’s why it’s so surprising when Lance sits down at Keith’s table at lunch one day, instead of his regular table with Pidge and Hunk. His mashed potatoes jiggly ominously as he slams the tray down in front of Keith. _Eurgh_ , school food.

“I need help,” Lance says, and Keith’s eyebrows shoot up so far they probably disappear completely behind his bangs.

“With…?” he replies, and Lance sighs as he digs around in his backpack for a moment. He puts the trigonometry homework on the table, and slides it toward Keith.

“I don’t get this at all, and you have the highest score in the class,” he admits, and Keith isn’t that surprised. He already knew Lance was starting to struggle in that class, because he’d been ahead of him in every test. He was winning their rivalry _easy-peasy_ thanks to trig.

But… It’s not really any fun if it’s _too easy_ , is it? There’s no challenge then.

(At least, that’s what he tells himself he pulls his notebook out and explains his notes to Lance. This is a trend that continues for the rest of that year.)

 

/

 

 _Here’s how Keith and Lance realize they’re crushing (on each other)_ :

 

 **Keith** doesn’t. Realize he’s crushing, that is.

As a matter of fact, it’s Pidge who tells him about his own feelings like some kind of psych. He’s been hanging out with them more-- Pidge and Hunk both--enough to call them friends, ever since a year ago when Lance started sitting with him at lunch. The other two followed suit, and then they were a neat little pack of friends.

(It was a new concept to Keith, actually. He wasn’t used to having _friend_ friends, not as close-knit as the three of them felt now.)

“Hey, remember that time I told Lance he could eat crayons and then he ate a whole pack of them and threw up on you?” _Yes_ , Keith remembers this. Pidge continues, “Ha. Funny how things work. Bet you never guessed you’d end up _liking_ him.”

The emphasis they put on _liking_ makes Keith turn his head and frown. “What?”

Pidge frowns in return. “What, was it supposed to be a secret? … Do you _not_ like him?”

“Like, _like_ like?” Keith asks, and immediately feels stupid even saying it. Pidge rolls their eyes.

“What are you, six? Yes, like you have a _crush_ on him.” they pause for a moment, squinting. “You do, don’t you? I really didn’t think I was wrong...”

Keith goes to deny it--but then he thinks about it, and realizes that he thinks about Lance a lot, specifically the little things like how nice his smile is and how just his laugh makes Keith want to laugh, too, and how much fun it was just being around Lance even though he’s also totally insufferable sometimes.

“... Huh,” Keith says, mostly to himself, and leaves Pidge staring at him blankly.

 

 

 **Lance** on the other hand, is more in-tune with his own (hormonal) feelings, and is very much aware of his growing affection for his supposed “rival”.

(He figures that that probably ended when he had to ask his “ _rival_ ” for help, but a teenage boy has got to keep his pride _somehow_.)

However, rather than face them head-on, like he _usually_ would do with his crushes, he opts to take a very different road and try not to focus on it as much as possible. There are two reasons for this:

 _Partially_ because all of his other attempts at wooing have always failed miserably and he doesn’t want to ruin his and Keith’s friendship, and _partially_ because thinking about it too much makes him break out in acne and there is _only so much Proactiv in the world, god help his oily face_.

Lance munches on a twizzler and listens as Hunk tells him over the phone, “Dude, you should probably just tell him,” before thinking simultaneously _Yes I’d like to do that_ and also _No what a horrible idea_ , so what he says to Hunk comes out as,

“Yes! What a horrible idea!”

And Hunk is silent for a moment and just kind of says, “Dude…” real quietly into the receiver and then Lance hangs up.

 

/

 

 _Here’s how Keith and Lance confess their feelings to each other_ :

 

They’re messing around at the tiny playground that’s nearby Keith’s house, and they’re both _way_ too old to be there, sitting on the swings side-by-side--but there’s no one else here so it’s fine. It’s cold enough that there won’t be any little kids coming by, anyway, so who cares.

(Though when Keith exhales, he can see his own breath, and sometimes he doesn’t know why he puts up with Lance’s weird suggestions.)

“Did you ever come here as a kid?” Lance asks, his voice muffled from the scarf wrapped around his neck and slightly over his mouth. Keith nods.

“All the time.” and it’s true. This little area was kind of his go-to think spot when he was a kid. Lance grins at him--Keith doesn’t need to be able to see his mouth to recognize the way his eyes crinkle up--and hops off the swing.

“Did you ever do this?” he asks, grabbing the swing and tossing it up and over the bar that holds it. The chain wraps around it once, and Lance catches it as it swings back. “I used to do it all the time growing up. Makes it more fun when your feet can’t touch the ground.”

Keith gets off his own swing and tosses it over the bar, just like Lance had done before. It’s a few more inches off the ground now, but still low enough that his feet would touch. Lance claps two gloved hands together.

“Yeah! Just like that. If you do it one more time it’ll probably be the perfect height.” he demonstrates again, throwing the swing over the bar. It’s high enough now that Keith would have to jump up a little to sit in it. “Older kids always used to do this in elementary school, and it made it really hard to get on the swings. It was always more fun to be higher up, though, if you could reach it.”

Snowflakes are beginning to drift down now, just a little bit as it starts to snow, and Keith knows they should probably be heading back but Lance looks _so_ content out here with the little white flakes catching in his brown hair that he keeps the thought to himself.

(Keith could probably stare at Lance for an _eternity_ , if the world allowed it.)

Lance is staring back at him now, and Keith thinks _oh shit I’ve been caught_ , so he grabs the swing and repeats the process of pushing it over the top just to make it seem like he was doing something other than admiring Lance--

“Hey, will you go out with me?”

Keith whips his head back toward Lance so fast he doesn’t even see the swing coming back around to crack him upside the skull.

 

/

 

 _Here’s how Keith and Lance start dating_ :

 

“Yes,” Keith says, as Lance panics and grabs his head. He had laid on the ground for a few seconds after being whacked by the swing, but he was fine now. He _felt_ fine.

“Dude! Keith you’re bleeding--Wait, what?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll date you.” Keith says again. Lance gives him a look that’s like _are you fucking crazy_ as Keith gently touches the place by his temple where he had been hit, and pulls his hand back. Oh, yeah, that _was_ blood.

Lance is pushing him toward his car, thank _God_ he brought his car, as he shakes his head. “You’re bleeding from your _head_ , you can’t answer that question now!”

“Why?”

“Because you’re probably concussioned--er, concussed, or something!” Lance snaps, taking off as soon as Keith shuts his side of the door. “I’m taking you to the ER.”

“I’m perfectly capable of answering that question! Concussion or no! And I said yes!”

Lance ignores him, and books it to the nearest hospital.

After they sit in the waiting room for a few minutes as Lance yells (“He’s literally _bleeding out of his head_ , can we get a little expedited here?”) they find out that Keith is, in fact, not concussed.

He does require stitches though. Keith isn’t exactly looking forward to getting _those_ taken out.

“I’m so sorry,” Lance mumbles, head in his hands as they leave the hospital. “This wasn’t how it was supposed to go at _all_.”

“You planned this?” Keith asks, genuinely surprised. Lance groans.

“I didn’t plan you needing _stitches_ on your head. That’s got to be some kind of record for the least romantic backdrop for asking someone out--”

“I still said yes, you know,” Keith interrupts, before Lance starts off on some never-ending tangent. “And I’m not concussed.”

This makes Lance pause.

“... I still don’t know if it counts. You got your head hit so hard by a swing you started _bleeding_.”

“Yes, Lance, I know,” Keith replies, agitated. Lance shoots him an angry look. “Did _you_ hit your head, too?”

“What? No--”

“Then will you go out with me?”

Lance gapes. He flounders like a fish, mouth opening, then closing, then opening again before finally:

“Y-Yeah.”

The corners of Keith’s lips turn upward.

“Then I guess it’s settled.”

 

/

 

 _And here’s how Keith and Lance know they’re meant to be_ :

 

Something knocks against Keith’s window. He glances over--there’s not a bird stuck there or anything, so he turns back to his computer. It’s 9PM and if he doesn’t finish this essay soon, it’ll _never_ get done.

Something knocks against Keith’s window again, and this time he frowns. He lives on the second story, _what the hell was going on_?

He scoots his chair out from his desk, and stands up to see--

Just _seconds_ before a rock shatters through his window.

(He’s very thankful he recently rearranged his room so that his window wasn’t directly over his desk anymore.)

Keith swears he hears a very familiar voice say “ _oh, crap_ ,” so he tiptoes carefully around the broken glass fragments and peeks out his window…

Sure enough, there’s Lance.

“What the hell are you--” Keith starts, but stops when he hears a knock at his door.

“Keith? Is everything alright?”

 _Shiro_. Keith turns his head from the window for a second, frowning. Please, _please_ don’t come in.

“Yeah, everything’s fine! Just… Knocked a glass over.”

There’s a pause for a minute, and Keith thinks he’s _so_ caught, when Shiro speaks up again.

“Okay. Just be careful cleaning it up! And…” he lowers his voice for a moment, “Get your boyfriend off the lawn, before mom and dad find him?”

Keith mumbles several expletives under his breath. “Okay, thanks Shiro.”

“No problem.” and then footsteps. Keith turns back toward the window, where Lance is _still_ standing. In the freezing cold. The breeze coming out from the new hole gives Keith goosebumps just from the contrast of the heated room and freezing outdoors.

“What are you doing?” he hisses, trying to keep his voice down. Lance makes a motion with his arms like _‘come here_ ’, and Keith really, _really_ thinks that Lance is going to be the death of him.

Slowly, careful to not shatter more glass everywhere, Keith lifts the remaining window up and climbs down the house, using the panels as steps for his feet.

(It may or may not be the first time he’s done this. It is _definitely_ the first time Lance has ever broke a rock through his window, though.)

“ _Hey_ ,” Lance greets him when his feet touch the ground, like he didn’t just shatter glass all over his bedroom floor. “It’s cold out!”

 _No shit_. Keith runs his hands up and down his arms, teeth already chattering. “Lance… Why are you here?”

His voice is level, but his glare could kill. Lance laughs, scratching the back of his head. “I thought it would be romantic! You know, throwing rocks at your window--”

“ _Through_ my window--”

“Details.” Lance waves a hand in the air, and Keith sighs.

(He is so in love, though.)

“Can you climb up the house?” he asks, because they were both going to turn into two gay popsicles out here, and Lance wiggles his eyebrows.

“You _know it_ , babe.”

And so Lance goes first, and then Keith, scaling it like he’d done it a thousand times.

(He had. But, as Lance would say, _details_.)

Lance winces when he sees the shattered glass everywhere, and sweeps it up as Keith sneaks downstairs to make two cups of hot chocolate.

“I’m sorry I broke your window.” Lance says, wrapping Keith’s comforter around the two of them when he comes back up. Keith sets the cups down on his dresser and pulls up Netflix on his laptop, smiling a bit when Lance presses into him.

“Don’t worry about it.” Keith replies, and he means it.

(If they have to wake up at 6am because Shiro is knocking on the door, telling Lance he should probably move his car before their parents wake up--well, that’s just fine, because it’s a Saturday morning and they can sleep in after that, anyway, as long as Lance is snug under the covers.)

 

**Author's Note:**

> i just want them to be happy. i just wanted PURE FLUFF--
> 
> so i wrote it. this is self indulgence tbh.
> 
> (my [tumblr!](http://isabelmagnolia.co.vu))


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